


don't forget it was real

by cydonic



Series: do you remember? [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Developing Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Drug Abuse, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Mycroft Being a Good Brother, Mycroft Feels, POV Mycroft Holmes, Self-Harm, Sherlock Holmes and Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-11 04:12:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5613553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cydonic/pseuds/cydonic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With each list Mycroft finds, a piece of his heart is fractured and left behind. Post-TAB.</p>
            </blockquote>





	don't forget it was real

**Author's Note:**

> this post-TAB fic contains some spoilers for the episode! this was hastily written after I couldn't shake the idea. at some point I may come back to this and add some more scenes, or Sherlock POV, but for now it's Mycroft trying to be a good brother but doesn't really know how. all my drug information comes from google so if something is significantly wrong with it, please advise me!

Sherlock is eight years old. He lies on the ground; Redbeard balances his chin Sherlock’s hip. Mycroft is sitting on the lounge, feet crossed at the ankles, both eyebrows raised in unasked question.

“I’m bored.” Sherlock implores, meeting Mycroft’s unimpressed gaze with his own curious one.

“So entertain yourself.” Mycroft responds, shaking his head.

Sherlock shrugs, which looks absolutely ridiculous sideways. “I can’t. My mind won’t stop.”

Mycroft snorts, gets up, and leaves.

It’s three am when Mycroft is awakened by the sound of Redbeard’s whines and Sherlock’s desperate sobs, pleading, “ _please make it stop_ ” through the wall they share.

\---

Sherlock is twelve when Mycroft finds him hunched over the toilet bowl, retching.

“What did you do to yourself?” Mycroft inquires, picking up the small bottle resting by the sink. The label is missing, as are a handful of the pills.

Redbeard’s head rests on Sherlock’s lap.

Beneath the surface, Mycroft’s chest feels too tight and rigid against his beating heart. Sherlock can’t have – surely not.

With hands sturdier than they feel, Mycroft fills a cup by the sink most often used for rinsing after brushing with water. He crouches down at Sherlocks’s side and offers him the glass. “Sherlock,” Mycroft’s voice feels unsteady around the notes of concern, “what did you take?”

Sherlock reluctantly takes the cup, sips down some water. His eyes don’t meet Mycroft’s as he mumbles, “sleeping pills. I just needed some quiet.”

Mycroft feels it again, that unpleasant chest clench. “Sherlock, how many did you take? You may need to go to hospital.”

Sherlock snorts, though it entirely lacks the derision it usually carries. “Why do you care?”

A moment stretches out between them, far too long. Mycroft realises as he’s been scrambling for an answer that any response now will seem forced, fake.

“Next time I’ll write you a note.” Sherlock adds, around another mouthful of water.

Mycroft rises to leave. He doesn’t know how to shape his mouths around the phrases he longs to share – _“I care about you”_ , _“I want to help you”_ , _“I love you”_ – and so he settles with nothing. His hands extend to hover above Sherlock’s head, and he vaguely imagines a world where he could say those words, where he could ruffle that hair.

Where they could be normal siblings.

\---

Sherlock is fourteen when Redbeard is put to sleep.

There are no sounds from Sherlock’s room.

Mycroft hovers. Paces. Goes to his own room, turns on the clunky computer, and attempts to distract and distance himself. He stands, moves. Folds clothes, tidies. His body shakes with unguided energy and his ears strain to hear anything, even a breath out of place.

Eventually Mycroft gives in and goes one door down. His knuckles rap out a gentle rhythm on the wooden surface of the door before pushing it open a fraction. “Sherlock?”

He is lying on his back on the bed, body spread-eagled, eyes closed.

Sherlock’s room is a mess – always has been – but it is of the ordered variety. Everything makes sense, from the precarious stack of clothing to the corner of the room that Mycroft understands as his ‘science experiment’ area but investigates no further.

His bed, however, is entirely clean and still neatly-made – with the exception of the creases his body makes.

By his side is a tiny white square of paper, torn around the edges. Mycroft, unable to help his curiousity, crosses to Sherlock’s side and reads it.

_chemical name: 8-chloro-1-methyl-6-phenyl-4H-s-triazolo [4,3-α] [1,4] benzodiazepine._

_molecular formula: C 17H13ClN4_

_dosage: 2mg_

_don’t wake me._

Mycroft quickly validates what Sherlock has written, including the recommended dosage for someone his size.

He then spends the next six hours of the night sitting at Sherlock’s bedside, watching his chest rise and fall with continued life.

When at last Sherlock stirs, groggily, Mycroft quickly takes his leave.

He keeps the note, and writes the date along the top in his own, cursive handwriting.

\---

Sherlock is nineteen, at university and hates it, if the texts Mycroft occasionally receives from him are anything to go by.

Since his move to London for work, Mycroft and Sherlock’s relationship has morphed. In a way, they communicate more now, however it’s entirely done by written means. Sherlock only bothers initiating contact when he finds something amusing to tell Mycroft, oftentimes a way in which he has proven his superior intelligence. Mycroft does the same. It’s a happy medium.

_why am I here?_

Mycroft picks up his phone, raises an eyebrow at the text.

_However should I know, Sherlock?_

He places his phone down and forgets about it, working through important paperwork. It is in half an hour that Mycroft checks once more, finding two unread messages from Sherlock.

_they’ll kick me out_

_why should I work when they tell me to?_

The exchange brings a small smile to Mycroft’s face. Sherlock, ever the same.

_That is how the tertiary education system functions, brother._

Again, there is a delay between Mycroft replying and checking his messages.

_200mg benzoylmethylecgonine_

Mycroft’s stomach drops.

He had, on occasion, found Sherlock asleep but it was always with a list beside him. And, more often than not, it was the same medication – Xanax – at the same dose. Mycroft suspected Sherlock had stolen it from somewhere, hence his inability to attain a variety.

Now, however, he was in the university world. And if there was one thing university students did, it was drugs.

Mycroft was not Sherlock’s father, nor his keeper, but that didn’t stop him pressing the call button beside Sherlock’s contact information.

He picked up moments before it went to voicemail.

“ _Yes?_ ”

“Cocaine, Sherlock? Really?”

“ _I promised you a list. I never promised I’d listen to you._ ”

“Call me when you’re finished.” Mycroft answered brusquely before disconnecting the call.

He spent the next two hours wondering if those were to be the last words he said to his brother. Sherlock trusted Mycroft enough to let him know when he planned on using, and what did Mycroft do in return? Act is if he was an idiot – which Mycroft honestly believed sometimes, but _why_ did he have to lace the implication through every chosen word, every text and call?

Just as he was poised to call Sherlock back (for the _n_ th time), another message came through.

_insufflation is boring_

Mycroft rests his hand on his knuckles for a while before he removes the small notebook from a locked drawer and writes in it.

\---

Sherlock is twenty and he prefers taking his cocaine intravenously, 50mg at a time.

 _It is a safe dose_ , Sherlock had justified to him once. _Easier to take less than it is more_.

Mycroft doesn’t see him without sleeves, but he writes down every instance.

\---

Sherlock is twenty-two and he has dropped out from Cambridge.

They meet in a café, both in suits. Mycroft fills his out respectably. It’s tailored. Sherlock has always been too-thin, but there are bags under his eyes, there are suggestions that it is not simply his awkward frame leaving the suit ill-fitting.

“So, you’re out then?” Mycroft ventures over their meals. He gently picks around the plate with a fork, eyes focused intently on Sherlock.

Sherlock has yet to pick up any cutlery. “Yes. It wasn’t for me.” His reply is tense and practiced.

“I worry about you.” Mycroft addresses his plate, pulling a tomato from his fork and chewing it whilst awaiting an answer.

Sherlock smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. Mycroft can’t quite remember a time when it did. “I’ll be fine.”

Mycroft swiftly changes subject. “I bought you a nicer phone than that beast you have.” Technological progressions are made available to those in high positions first. Mycroft extends the phone across the table – still with a keypad, but with more precise GPS function.

Sherlock pockets it and excuses himself from lunch early, his plate entirely untouched.

Mycroft finishes his own lunch and returns to his office.

Sherlock knows as surely as he does that the phone is a ploy, and that the GPS signal projects directly to Mycroft’s computer. He watches Sherlock move around the streets of London alongside important emails. He lingers in places, ones that Mycroft can’t name, until eventually his signal stops for an hour. It’s not a lodging, but an alley.

Mycroft sweeps the coat from the back of his chair and pulls it over his shoulders.

When he finds Sherlock he is lying on his side on a dirty, discarded mattress. At Mycroft’s approach, the people able to scurry away do so. “I am not here for you.” Mycroft shoots at them, his agitated tone betraying the message of his words.

He crouches down by Sherlock’s side, his fingers immediately seeking out his pulse. It is there, slow but constant. Mycroft exhales a breath he doesn’t realise he’s been holding, before delicately picking through Sherlock’s coat pockets.

In one he finds a crumpled receipt, the front of it faded, the back text patterned as if he leaned against a brick wall to write. The pen fades in and out. Mycroft spies a tiny swirl where the pen was urged back to life.

_heroin, purified, 15mg iv._

“Sherlock?” Mycroft asks, gently shaking Sherlock’s shoulder.

He makes a noise of protest, rolling away from the contact. Eventually, with continued shaking, his eyes open. “What are you doing?” Sherlock’s speech is slurred, his constricted pupils unable to focus.

“I’m taking you to a proper bed.” Mycroft explains, having to use his entire body mass to lift Sherlock from the ground. Gangly he may be, but a dead weight isn’t an easy thing to contend with.

“I don’t understand.” Sherlock says, leaning heavily on Mycroft as they go to his car. “Are we going home?”

“You’re coming to my house.” Mycroft explains. The driver opens the door for the both of them, and helps Mycroft shove Sherlock inside. He offers the man several bills for his discretion – one can never be too certain.

When Mycroft joins Sherlock in the interior of the vehicle, he is sprawled across three seats and smiling contentedly at the roof. The expression sends a pang of something like sadness through Mycroft. Sherlock never smiles for him.

But then, why would he?

“Are we home?” Sherlock asks as he is pulled upright and the seatbelt fastened across his slumping frame. He goes right back to his boneless sprawl as soon as Mycroft releases him.

“We will be soon.”

Sherlock shuffles about a bit more before settling, his head curled up against Mycroft’s thigh. Mycroft runs his hand through Sherlock’s hair as they drive.

Once indoors, he spends the evening sitting with Sherlock on the lounge. Every part of his body that Sherlock touches feels unnatural. Physical affection has never been given freely between them, and Mycroft doubts even now that it is something Sherlock is _giving._ More than likely it is simply that Sherlock has no control, and is enjoying the feeling.

“I like this.” Sherlock hums, after an hour of wriggling.

Mycroft sighs, but Sherlock is oblivious. “Do you?”

“It’s quiet. It’s like I can pick thoughts I like,” he mimics this by extending a hand slowly and grasping air, “and explore them. When I’m done, they just go.”

Eventually Sherlock comes down enough to fall into a constant sleep.

Mycroft is trapped on his own lounge overnight, pinned by Sherlock’s body. Mycroft could lift Sherlock – knows it for a fact – but he doesn’t bother. He’d rather Sherlock get some rest.

When dawn breaks, and Mycroft is roused from his brief slumber, Sherlock is gone but the note remains. It joins the others in his notebook as Mycroft heads into the office for an unproductive day.

\---

Sherlock is twenty-six, a semi-constant user of his drugs of choice: cocaine and heroin.

“You simply must return home now, I have solved it.” Sherlock all but yells down the phone, insistent until Mycroft gives in and leaves the office early.

When he gets home, the house is an absolute mess. Sherlock has moved everything around, with seemingly no pattern or method to the madness. It takes Mycroft a good five minutes simply to find the man, on his back in the bathroom surrounded by shattered glass. The mirror above him no longer exists, and Mycroft hears the shards crunch beneath his thick-soled shoes.

“Sherlock, really?” Mycroft asks, glad to find the man on the ground does not seem too injured but rather annoyed at the state of his bathroom. “Come here.”

Sherlock sits up with immediacy, crossing barefoot to Mycroft without flinching. “I wrote you a note.”

It’s bloodied, the handwriting jagged.

_cocaine ~~300mg~~ ?? _ _☺_

“Thank you.” Mycroft pockets the note before taking Sherlock’s hand. The chunks of glass protruding from his body glitter underneath the light.

They find the nearest chair, Mycroft seats Sherlock. “Please stay here.” He instructs, hoping the _please_ will achieve something. He disappears briefly to sweep up the bathroom enough to make it habitable, before hunting down a bowl, a towel, and tweezers.

When he returns, Sherlock is still in place, surprisingly. His feet bounce, leaving bloodied footprints on the floor. At least it’s not carpet.

“You were saying on the phone you solved something.” Mycroft invites the conversation, and Sherlock does not disappoint.

His twitching makes it hard for Mycroft to pull all the glass from his body, and by the time he’s done he is surrounded by bloodied shards and a ruined towel.

Sherlock had stopped his discussion earlier, about some high-profile murder case he solved, and has his wide eyes trained on Mycroft.

“Yes?” Mycroft asks, perhaps a bit forcefully.

“You’re going to tell them.” Sherlock murmurs with absolute fear, which is in stark contrast to earlier when he’d _demanded_ Mycroft call Scotland Yard immediately and tell them his answer.

“Yes, you asked me to earlier. It will have to wait until morning, though.” Mycroft is busy tidying up, the bowl of mirror remnants safely on the table far, far away from Sherlock.

Which is probably for the best, as the next second he has tackled and pinned Mycroft to the ground. Mycroft is not physically strong, and Sherlock has the advantage of drug-fuelled fervour behind him. “You can’t tell them!” His hands twitch, digging into Mycroft’s shoulder.

“I won’t tell them, then.” Mycroft replies calmly, hands winding around Sherlock’s wrists in a way he hopes is comforting. It would not do to be murdered by his drug addicted brother in his own home.

Sherlock’s chest is moving so violently that his whole body appears to shake, twitching at certain moments. “I know you will.” He says, dangerously low. “You can’t tell them.”

Mycroft can feel his phone in his pocket and he knows he could probably call for help, but he doesn’t know if he could deal with Sherlock’s resulting distrust.

So instead he remains on the floor, pinned by his younger brother, promising not to tell anyone anything.

It takes time for Sherlock to accept Mycroft won’t tell anybody, at which point he crumples. His body is wracked by violent sobs, which are not helped by the fact that his body is still shaking like a leaf. Mycroft runs a hand along his back, soothing as best he can.

Sherlock falls asleep on the floor, and Mycroft doesn’t have the heart to leave nor move him.

\---

Sherlock makes it to twenty-eight without another significant incident before he starts working in earnest with Lestrade. It turns out the case he solved on his cocaine binge really was impressive, and Scotland Yard could use a mind like that – only with less substance abuse, presumably.

In those two years, Mycroft marks:

  * A fondness for cocaine, IV ( _he eagerly takes in the room, jagged, moving from side to side without any thought. He stands on the lounge, proclaims to understand the origins of the world, then becomes the centre of it, everything gravitating towards him)_ ;
  * A rivalling fondness for heroin, IV ( _hours at a time spent curled up on the couch, their bodies together, and Mycroft can touch and not feel bad, can act as if they are normal, affectionate siblings when usually the contact burns)_ ;
  * A one-off with marijuana, smoked ( _“I can’t get the thoughts out of my head.” Sherlock sobbed, fingers clawing at Mycroft’s shirt. He moved so slowly, and begged for relief. “I want to be now, I don’t want to be stuck. I can’t get them out, I just want something else.” He’d murmured brokenly, and though it had made no sense to Mycroft he simply held onto Sherlock as he ranted and raved and begged and_ pleaded _and Mycroft felt his heart fragment just a little._ ); and
  * An assortment of pills, none of significant note, taken orally.



The notebook fills, slowly but surely.

\---

Sherlock is twenty-nine, and Mycroft has to call in sick for him as if he is his mother.

“Unwell again?” Lestrade is gruff.

“Yes, unfortunately.” Mycroft glances at the body on the floor, writhing against the carpet. “He can still work from here.”

“What is it this time?” Lestrade asks, and Mycroft looks down at the note in his hands. Not that he has to – he knows what’s written there.

_cocaine 200mg iv_

Mycroft sighs. “It’s a cold.”

Lestrade hums knowingly. “Perhaps you should look at getting him some help. Supplements for that weak immune system, you know.”

Mycroft is more than capable of reading between the lines. Sherlock flings a hand up to grab something invisible, pulls it down to him and looks with reverence. “He doesn’t believe in them. He’d rather inconvenience me by making me his caretaker.”

“Make sure you look after yourself, too.”

“I will.” Mycroft disconnects the call and goes to spend his day sitting with Sherlock and keeping him away from any glass.

\---

Sherlock is thirty-one when he meets John Watson, and he’s a dream come true.

John is a doctor, eager to be in Sherlock’s presence, and apparently capable of telling Sherlock _no_ when he’s doing something to harm himself. Mycroft wonders if that’s it, if his usefulness has been reached and he is to be disposed of from Sherlock’s life.

There is, in fact, no issue until Sherlock throws himself off a building.

\---

Sherlock is thirty-three and pretending to be dead and seems intent on attaining that title for real, at times.

_“speedball”_

Is all the note reads. Mycroft is not so out of touch, he knows what it means – cocaine and heroin, Sherlock’s two favourite tools of self-destruction taken in unison. All the pleasure of a cocaine high with the heroin to mellow out the come down.

Mycroft tracks Sherlock to a disgusting, abandoned building full of high squatters.

Sherlock is as good as the corpse he left for John to find. His skin is pale, lips and fingers tipped with blue. Mycroft places a hand to his lips and feels the barest hint of a breath brush against them, too slowly.

“Sherlock?” Mycroft asks, shaking his shoulders.

His eyes open, roll back into his head. “Mycroft.” He manages to slur, and even then it being Mycroft’s name is a liberal interpretation of the noise.

When Mycroft lifts him up, Sherlock is a ragdoll. He doesn’t move, he simply sags.

It’s a miracle Mycroft gets him to the car, and later into his house.

Sherlock is a shaking mess, and all Mycroft can do is drag him to the bathroom and hold him over the toilet bowl. He has a glass of water, which Sherlock helpfully regurgitates into the toilet every time it’s given to him. Mycroft continues to try until two hours pass and Sherlock is finally able to keep the mouthful down. Mycroft sits behind Sherlock’s body, arms around his chest to keep him upright.

Most of what Sherlock says is nonsensical murmuring. At one point, Mycroft hears, “thank you,” but it could mean anything.

When Sherlock awakens the next morning, he doesn’t leave his bedroom until Mycroft knocks and enters. He comes bearing gifts of cold, bland toast and a glass of water. Sherlock is haggard, but gratefully takes the platter offered to him.

“I need your help with something.” Mycroft says, sitting gently on the edge of the bed.

The way Sherlock looks at him is so knowing, and Mycroft so desperately wants to ask if Sherlock needs his help too.

But the moment passes, Sherlock agrees to help, and the speedball enters the notebook along with the rest.

\---

Sherlock is thirty-four and somehow, miraculously, alive.

John mentions in passing finding Sherlock ‘undercover’ to him, but Mycroft remains politely tight-lipped about the whole thing. Molly Hooper slaps him, Sherlock relays. Mycroft thinks he probably deserved it – wonders if he should react the same.

Once more everything falls into the safe pattern with John Watson. Sherlock has cases, has a keeper who is far more useful than Mycroft, and has no need to turn to his _other_ means of entertainment.

It isn’t until they’re on the plane, and Mycroft sees it again. He feels it pull apart at him, taking one more piece of his heart and crushing it to dust. If this continues much longer Mycroft will be nothing but a whisper of once-concern.

But Sherlock has John now, and Mycroft doesn’t miss the way John ignores Mary in favour of checking Sherlock over. At the times he falls out of consciousness, John is particular: he checks Sherlock’s pulse, monitors his breathing, checks his pupils. John cycles between the three checks, and Mycroft can see him lingering on the precipice: call for help, or let him ride it out.

Sherlock’s track record has been good so far, Mycroft wants to observe, but somehow he doubts the good doctor will appreciate his enabling.

Once Sherlock is lucid enough, Mycroft asks: “the list, Sherlock?” John appears scandalised, whilst Sherlock obediently passes it to him, and Mycroft doesn’t even flinch.

_heroin, 30mg, purified, iv_

When Sherlock takes it back, however, Mycroft is surprised. There has never been a time he’s torn up a list. Even the times when he left in the early hours before dawn, the piece of paper sat in Mycroft’s clear view, ready to be filed.

Mycroft watches as the note is torn up into pieces, and Sherlock leaves the plane.

He doesn’t need the list, and he doesn’t need Mycroft. John is at his tail, none-too-subtle about his desire for Sherlock to be seen in the hospital. Before they can leave, Mycroft summons John back.

“Take care of him.” Mycroft says quietly to John. Then, as an afterthought: “please.”

For a moment, he briefly considers leaving the torn pages to remain. Then Mycroft realises he can’t. The one connection he had to his brother was in keeping him alive and now John has taken that from him.

Mycroft places the torn pages in the book. He reads them all over, traces the handwriting. Notes how, at times, it was jagged with the early onset of a high and at others perfectly neat with forethought. It is days later that Mycroft burns the notebook in its entirety.

Perhaps it is time for a change. Mycroft has enough of his heart left for that.


End file.
